Gastronomy612′s Weblog

David had Andy and Kim over for dinner last weekend where we grilled salmon, asparagus and had fingerling potatoes with a lime butter sauce that will knock your socks off.  In buying the salmon, we purchased an extra half pound so we could hoard it to ourselves and cure it (gravlax) at home as Luscious Food taught me.  And cure it we did.

You need the following to create your own gravlax:

one half pound of salmon

2 Tbs sugar

2 Tbs good kosher salt

2Tbs pepper

A big bunch of fresh dill

Take your salmon, and lay it on a sheet of Saran wrap big enough to wrap around the entire piece.  Mix all of your salt, pepper, and sugar together in a bowl until well incorporated, then slather the meat side of your salmon with it until well coated.  Lay all of your dill on top of the salmon, like you are covering it up warm for a good night’s sleep.  Saran wrap it tightly together.

When you have it all wrapped up for bed, place the piece on a plate or big enough bowl with ridges, as the salmon will secrete it’s juices because of the spices it is coated with (stuff you don’t want dripping all over your refrigerator).  We put ours in a pie glass, with Ziploc bags of heavy change on top to keep everything pressed against the fish.

Many sites recommend curing the meat for a minimum of three days, but many people cannot wait that long and cave within two days.  Luckily, David was out of town for most of the week, so ours was curing for a whole week before we unwrapped the salmon, discarded the dill, and washed the salmon off (it’s OK to put under running water, and OK to have a few remaining specks of spice), then patted it dry with a paper towel.  We sliced up some ciabatta bread I made, and served it with spicy brown mustard.

There is no doubt that it was very good, and appetizing and well worth the wait.  This is something that would work great as an hors’ dourves or snack in the future and is not something one should go to town on and inhale like popcorn.  Rather, one needs to chew slowly and savory each bite to taste all of the flavors contained within it.

I ended up having a slight texture problem with the gravlax, as there was no other texture on this plate other than soft and squishy.  I love sushi (sushi, not just California rolls), and don’t know why my texture problem came into play here.  In the future I will use a crunchy cracker to plate the cured salmon to add another texture to the appetizer.

Do you have texture problems with certain foods?  What are they?